Jinteki: Harmony Medtech

As someone who's been quite fond of the "Install-advance-advance, whatcha gonna do about it" strategy, I keenly feel your argument about this identity doing that, but waaay faster - even if you win, taking 45 min to win in a tournament can be quite a problem. Of course it will depend on what new cards are released, particularily ICE - the way I see it, this deck wants some R&D ICE that taxes harshly, allowing the Runner some accesses here and there, but not enough to hit both the required jackpots, and I feel the ICE options available so far aren't completely ideal for this.

On the other hand, as an Anarch player with three Mediums and soon a Keyhole, I can't wait until everybody starts playing this!~ It ought to do quite well against the ever-popular Criminals though, given that you can have enough of an economy to tank those Account Siphons (what with light HQ defense) and still keep your traps springable.

On the other hand, as an Anarch player with three Mediums and soon a Keyhole, I can't wait until everybody starts playing this!

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, and I may be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure Medium and Keyhole will not work together. Medium says each counter on it allows you to "access one additional card from R&D when you access cards from R&D". However, Keyhole specifically says "instead of accessing cards, look at the top 3 cards from R&D." With that wording, you can pick and choose which of the two you want to do, but I don't think they can work together to send even more cards to archives.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, and I may be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure Medium and Keyhole will not work together. Medium says each counter on it allows you to "access one additional card from R&D when you access cards from R&D". However, Keyhole specifically says "instead of accessing cards, look at the top 3 cards from R&D." With that wording, you can pick and choose which of the two you want to do, but I don't think they can work together to send even more cards to archives.

Oh, I'm quite aware that they don't combo as such. However, they should still have great synergy - whenever you make a Keyhole run, you'll still get virus counters on your Mediums, since it's still a "successful run on R&D" (although the Medium counters won't, as you point out, affect the Keyhole run), making Keyhole a more efficient way of stacking your Mediums than simply running on the R&D. Then, with a couple of virus counters, you can make a regular run on R&D - then, if you haven't won yet (because the top cards of R&D were, or at least are now, non-agendas), you can make a Keyhole run to force a shuffle, get rid of a non-agenda and get even more Medium counters, and then make a fresh Medium run, seeing "only new cards".

That's carnage, right there.

I agree that Anarchs (particularily Noise, who I see making a comeback) could be the proverbial "wrench" in this style of deck, especially because most of these decks are not going to have the infulence to run Jackson Howard. That being said, it may take a while for people to make that switch from Andromeda, who I believe will struggle against this type of deck, and which will allow this deck to run rampent. Not to mention a lot of the Shaper builds that are being played right now, that won't be able to handle the speed while they are setting up their rig. I will more than likely not be playing Jinteki still, as it's not really my style of deck, but I will definitely be paying close attention to it (it helps that SlySquid will be playing this against me A LOT!).

Actually, even JHow doesn't shut the carnage down completely. An example I've been thinking of: You're going to make four runs in one turn (not unfeasible with the Anarch rig), and have Keyhole and one or more Mediums. The Corp has a JHow that you can't really be bothered to get to (or at least you suspect they do). You Keyhole on your first click. Then either

- You find and trash an agenda; you then make a Medium-run on R&D, and follow up with a run on Archives. Either the Corp uses Jackson and you don't get the trashed agenda, but they'll shuffle R&D for you, so you can do a fresh Medium-run as your last click, or they don't use JHow and you get that trashed agenda (in which case you're free to do whatever with your last click).

- You don't find an agenda, in which case you can do Medium, Keyhole (this run in all likelihood won't find an agenda, or you'd have stolen it on your last run), Medium; something Jackson won't affect.

Regardless, as you're saying, I feel this sort of Corp deck does really well against Criminal and some Shapers, which has also been my reason for running it. I've actually been running it with HB though, since Bioroid ICE is utterly magnificent for high-taxation central defense, and its more lackluster external defense hardly matters. I'm quite keen to see if Jinteki gets any ICE with similar capabilites.

I hadn't even considered the possibility of all 3-pointers in Harmony Medtech - that's a scary, scary proposition.

Regarding R&D lock, remember that most advanceable traps have a 0 trash cost - so make those R&D runs as taxing as you can (Tsurugi should be a good bet).

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, and I may be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure Medium and Keyhole will not work together.

This is a massive rabbit trail, but they synergize so well they might start a new archetype called "keydium."

E.g., Keyhole 1st run (shuffle), medium run next, then keyhole again (shuffle), and medium last. You just saw 10 different cards in one turn, possibly throwing 2 agenda in Archives, or at worst plucking 2 annoying cards out of R&D. While establishing R&D lock. And giving the corp a terrible decision to either clear counters, so you'll access ANOTHER 10 cards next turn, or try to stop you, leaving 4 counters on medium, which means accessing another 20 cards (!) if they can't. If you're worried about Jinteki traps, just keyhole them away while you stack counters, and go for a glory run after you've declawed them sufficiently.

Now, whether this archetype is best assembled Anarch or Shaper is another question entirely...

Of course, the setup you mention is pretty heavy, with four installs, a total install cost of 13, and requiring five memory (I understood it that you wanted Keyhole and triple Medium). Not only that, but it'll need a robust suite of breakers (Anarch breakers, with Morning Star over Corroder, do multiple subsequent runs well due to their low costs; Atman could feasibly do the same, but not without issues) and support programs like Datasucker. This makes the rig both install-intensive and memory-intensive.

Now with all that said, it's surprisingly doable, but it requires a few cards that lately seem less than popular. Sahasrara is obvious (and well liked by Anarch players, I gather), but the memory cost quickly becomes untenable without heavy use of Djinns, a card I for some reason see many people scoff at. My favourite "trick" is to install a Djinn on the first Djinn, and then install the third Djinn on the second one. Of course, that is certainly "putting all your eggs in one basket", and a Secretary or bad Archer will ruin your day, but it's a wonderful way to conserve memory, allowing you to have a full breaker suite and possibly even a few extra programs hanging around.

Relatedly, I look forward to Sharpshooter.

you'll access ANOTHER 10 cards next turn, or try to stop you, leaving 4 counters on medium, which means accessing another 20 cards (!)

Being pedantic, but it's important to note that you don't ACCESS cards with Keyhole. They're not accessed until you go scoop from Archives, so still vulnerable to Jackson or Archived Memories.

That said, Keyhole is a MONSTER card. You really (really) need to ICE the living hell out of R&D when it hits the table, or you are in for ALL the pain.

Well, Archived Memories (or, for that matter, Interns, although at least you'll know exactly where the agenda is then) is hardly an issue, since, as long as you don't Keyhole on your last click, you can always just run Archives as your last click. Similarily, as I mentioned earlier, JHow can be countered - just don't get greedy, and make your Archive runs while you know/suspect that there's -exactly- one Agenda there. Either they'll give you the agenda, or they'll sacrifice JHow to defend only one agenda, and shuffle-for-free the R&D in the process.

One of the more annoying ones is actually an overcharged Vitruvius; but this is counterable by playing Noise (force them to use Vitruvius counters earlier, possibly for non-agendas - although there's a risk you'll be giving the Corp free combos!) and by swinging a Nerve Agent.